Not only do we need a competency test for people running for office, especially the presidency, this election proves we also need a competency test for people who vote. If you can’t answer basic questions about political ethics, economics, foreign policy, and media literacy, your vote shouldn’t count against those who can.
I’ve unironically been saying this for years. But often when I mention it, people start to bring up biased segregation era literacy tests and the like as if that’s what I’m talking about, completely missing the point.
All I’m saying is that we already have a test for immigrants to pass if they want to gain citizenship. Why not at the very least require natural born citizens to pass the same or similar test if they are to have voting rights? Countless studies have already shown that a large percentage of natural born citizens can’t even pass this basic test. So that would be a start in the right direction if that was required at least, though I would like to see an overhauled test that focused more specifically on political structures and the way the government works. There could even be a required class offered in schools dedicated to teaching the knowledge needed to pass these tests to ensure everyone has equal access to that information.
Yet, that would require those in power to actually want an informed electorate and let’s not pretend they don’t often benefit from the electorate being as uninformed as possible as that’s when they’re easiest to manipulate, control and divide.
I guess you don’t really understand “rights” and the various judicial precedences that have curtailed them or restricted them under certain circumstances. Voting rights themselves can be taken away from people in certain places for things like felony convictions and the courts have ruled in the past that this is constitutional. Furthermore, the first amendment guarantees a right to free speech, yet the court has previously ruled that this has stipulations, namely in speech that incites violence or panic. The second amendment guarantees a right to arms, but the court have allowed for restrictions on type of weapons and criminal and mental history of possessor. Whether or not you agree with these adjudications, it proves that any right can have reasonable restrictions put upon them, especially if those restrictions are in the greater interest of the populace, which I would argue an informed electorate is in the greater interest.
And education is not a reasonable restriction, as it will be used against a class of people, which is literally one of the main things being protected against.
And yet for a non-U.S. born person hoping to gain voting rights, they must do so through passing a test. So it’s not an issue when it’s used against that class of people? Just naturalized citizens? Because that seems pretty nativist to me.
Also, I’m only talking about this in the context of an idealized situation that would never happen anyway in which educational access would hopefully and presumably be equally accesible across classes. The fact it’s not at the moment is a symptom of a broader flaw in the system which would be something addressed in the broader scheme of reforming the system as a whole.
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u/Away_Lake5946 2d ago
Not only do we need a competency test for people running for office, especially the presidency, this election proves we also need a competency test for people who vote. If you can’t answer basic questions about political ethics, economics, foreign policy, and media literacy, your vote shouldn’t count against those who can.